Apple’s Night Shift Vs F.lux Comparison
Apple recently added Night Shift to macOS , which changes the color temperature of the screen based on the time of day in the hopes that it will help you sleep better. Before the launch of Night Shift, f.lux was used for this. Let’s see how they compare.
Night Shift and f.lux (free) sound the same at first sight. They both try to reduce their exposure to blue light at night by applying a warmer color filter to the screen after sunset. The similarities end there, and in typical Apple fashion, which one you use depends primarily on how much you enjoy tinkering with settings.
F.lux offers more customization options
The biggest and most important difference between f.lux and Night Shift lies in your settings. With Night Shift, you can set when Night Shift is activated and then select a color temperature on a scale from less warm to warmer.
F.lux offers an insane variety of possibilities . You can select the screen temperature during the day, at sunset / sunrise, and before bed. You can choose from various color presets or create your own. There’s even a Night Owl setting for those who really prefer to work late.
Apart from that, f.lux also lets you set how long the color transitions last, what time you get up on weekends, and you can set reminders when bedtime is approaching. F.lux even includes several specific types of color effects, such as a darkroom mode that inverts colors, a movie mode that preserves colors when certain light sources are reduced, and a mode that automatically launches the macOS dark theme at sunset.
Night shift effect is less noticeable
Since Night Shift comes with a commercial product, it is slightly less extreme than f.lux. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, Night Shift targets a wide range of people, while f.lux fills a niche. F.lux parses the differences in forum posts , the main difference is how f.lux also reduces blue-green light:
F.lux argues that Night Shift simply does not reduce the amount of light needed to sleep. We know the purported effect is much more than just a reduction in blues, but it’s hard to tell if one or the other is actually better for sleeping.
However, Night Shift is much less intrusive because all it does is add a warmer filter to your display, and you can use it without disrupting general computer use if you’re not working on color correction in photos or video. Even with all the possible tweaks to the settings, f.lux has a much more noticeable impact because it does more than just apply a warmer filter; it changes the total amount of light along with the color.
F.lux works on older Macs (and everything else)
A small surprise that happened with the launch of Night Shift on Mac is its limited compatibility. For some reason, Night Shift is limited to the following Macs:
- MacBook (Early 2015 or newer)
- MacBook Air (Mid 2012 or newer)
- MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer)
- Mac mini (Late 2012 or newer)
- iMac (Late 2012 or newer)
- Mac Pro (Late 2013 or newer)
The good news, however, is that f.lux works on almost all existing Macs (as well as Windows and Linux ). So, if Night Shift doesn’t work, you can get the same effect from f.lux’s default settings, so don’t feel like you’re missing out on something special.
There is also the fact that f.lux is constantly under development, quite often small iterations are released, and new important features are added at a steady pace. The developers behind f.lux constantly talk about the research behind their work and make changes to the software as they go. I doubt Apple will display the same sense of dedication to the little little feature they’ve added to their operating systems.
However, Night Shift is still useful for a lot of people, and the ease of setting it up and being forgotten means it will be used by a lot more people. If you need more features, grab yourself a copy of f.lux.